This blog aims to encourage discussion of economic and social history, broadly defined. We live in a time of major social and economic change, and recent research in social science is showing more and more how much a historical and long-term approach to current issues can be the key to understanding our times. The importance of bringing together the disciplines that compose what we call social sciences and have them interact in a historical perspective is absolutely fundamental not only for the future directions of economic history, but also to be able to reflect on the mechanisms that regulate our world through data and knowledge.

The Long Run aims to host senior scholars as well as young researchers, and anyone who has interesting and scientifically sound contributions to make to Economic and Social History. The blog will also be a way for EHS members and anyone interested in the activities of the Society to keep updated on its activities, from our Review to CFPs and other activities that you can find on our website

It is appropriate to record my appreciation for Professor Peter Fearon, outgoing Chair of the EHS Public Engagement committee, who originally conceived the idea for the blog. A special thanks also to our editorial team: Marta Musso, Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo, Amy Ridgway, Judy Stephenson and Romesh Vaitilingam, without whom this blog would not exist. Special thanks are due to Marta who did much of the ‘heavy lifting’.

We look forward to seeing you here regularly, always standing on the shoulders of giants.

by Jim Tomlinson, Professor of Economic and Social History, University of Glasgow From VOX – 05 July 2015

In Britain today, a majority of those in poverty live in working, rather than non-working, households. This challenges the long-held notion that paid work offers a route out of poverty. This column argues that structural changes in the labour market have brought about profound changes in the social security system. A failure to acknowledge these underlying changes means that dialogues about the political direction of the British economy can be problematic and potentially misleading.

Conference Report: University of Cambridge, 13-14 September 2016
by Sabine Schneider, University of Cambridge

‘Dividend Day at the Bank of England’ by George Elgar Hicks (1824-1914), Bank of England Museum. Copyright: The Governor and Company of the Bank of England

Retracing the path to the Great Recession, Barry Eichengreen has observed how ‘The historical past is a rich repository of analogies that shape perceptions and guide public policy decisions.’[1] Certainly, recent years have shown that analogies drawn from historical experience are most in demand ‘when there is no time for reflection.’[2] Beyond the study of banking crises and financial regulation, the past decade of economic turmoil has generated renewed scholarly interest in the evolution and politics of financial capitalism. While the legacy of the Great Recession has profoundly shaken established tenets of mainstream economics, it has also stressed the need for new historical narratives that understand the world economy within the specific cultural contexts, economic ideas and political debates of the past. On 13 and 14 September, the Centre for Financial History at Darwin College, Cambridge, hosted an early career conference to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue about histories of finance, global trade and monetary policy. Over the two conference days, twenty early career scholars and doctoral researchers presented papers that ranged, in period and geography, from medieval Catalonia and eighteenth-century Scotland to pre-war China and post-war Britain. This review will reflect on three major themes of the conference: the art and science of central banking, studies in political economy, and cultural approaches to the history of finance.

Central banking and the formation of monetary policy have resurfaced as key concerns for economic historians since the 2007/8 financial crisis. The debate over the Bank of England’s evolving role as Lender of Last Resort, for instance, was re-examined by Dr Paul Kosmetatos (Edinburgh). His paper analysed Adam Smith’s and Henry Thornton’s differing recommendations for crisis containment as a starting-point for evaluating the Bank’s conduct in 1763 and 1772. Kosmetatos concluded that the Bank’s timely injection of liquidity via the banknote channel during the latter crisis showed that ‘the attitude and means of intervention described by Thornton were already practically in place.’ Pamfili Antipa (Banque de France/Paris School of Economics) presented new Bank of England balance sheet data that adds considerably to our knowledge of how the British government financed the Napoleonic and Revolutionary Wars. Her joint research with Professor Christophe Chamley (Boston) revealed that the Bank strategically operated in the secondary market for Exchequer bills in order to re-direct funds to the Treasury. For the post-war period, Oliver Bush’s paper (Bank of England/LSE) investigated Britain’s approach to monetary and macroprudential policies in the years after the UK Radcliffe Report (1959). Based on collaborative research with Dr David Aikman (Bank of England) and Professor Alan M. Taylor (California), Bush presented new findings on the ‘causal impacts of interest rates and credit controls’ on inflation and economic activity.[3]

The evolution and management of modern central banks in mainland Europe and Great Britain formed the focus of three further papers. Starting with the foundation of Germany’s Reichsbank in 1876, Ousmène Mandeng (LSE) explored the role of competition and monetary stability as integral elements of the operation of Germany’s central bank prior to 1890. Mandeng argued that the Reichsbank’s flexible reserve requirements, as well as its rivalry with regional note issuing banks in the market for bills, created an effective, incentives-based system of central banking. Enrique Jorge-Sotelo (LSE) took a micro-historical approach to the Spanish banking crisis of 1931, assessing the criteria the Banco de España employed for the provision and conditions of its emergency loans. In her closing keynote, Dr Anne Murphy (Hertfordshire) examined the origins of modern management practices at the Bank of England.[4] Shedding light on the Bank’s working processes, recruitment, and staff training during the 1780s, Dr Murphy demonstrated that the Bank took important steps towards fostering and monitoring good managerial practice, which over the long run may have aided ‘the development of trust in the British public finances.’[5]

The politics of currency, taxation, and trade shaped a second major strand of the conference. Professor Martin Daunton (Cambridge) delivered a wide-ranging keynote on ‘Bretton Woods Revisited: Currency, Commerce and Contestation’. Shifting the focus away from the predominant narrative of US-UK rivalry at Bretton Woods, Daunton re-evaluated the specific domestic concerns of several Western European and Commonwealth countries, which affected their negotiating positions at the 1944 summit and at subsequent international trade conferences. The League of Nations’ work in the field of trade finance in the years leading up to the Great Depression was re-examined by Jamieson Gordon Myles (Geneva). His paper investigated the League’s failed internationalist efforts, and traced how economic nationalism and beggar-thy-neighbour policies could take hold in the inter-war period. New research on France, China, and Germany prompted further reflections on the impact of global integration in capital markets, and its effect on nations’ public finances. Jerome Greenfield (Cambridge), for example, investigated the political economy of France’s fiscal constitution between 1789 and 1852. Greenfield’s paper elucidated the central government’s rationale for re-introducing and extending indirect taxes after they had been abolished during the French Revolution. Ghassan Moazzin (Cambridge) discussed the Chinese state’s practice of raising capital for public expenses through foreign bond markets in the early twentieth century. His paper demonstrated that the interventions of Western bankers to uphold China’s credit had a critical influence on the political outcome of the Republican Revolution of 1911. Considering the nexus between finance and diplomacy, Sabine Schneider (Cambridge) appraised the role of cosmopolitan financial elites in Germany’s conversion to a gold standard. Her paper examined the semi-official position of Gerson von Bleichröder, private banker and economic advisor to Bismarck, and his interventions in the monetary reforms Germany pursued after unification.

Several papers pointed to the underexplored potential of cultural and social history to broaden our understanding of how economic cultures, ideologies and policies are themselves socially constructed. Owen Brittan’s paper (Cambridge) drew on autobiographical evidence to assess men’s anxiety over bankruptcy and debt in later Stuart England, and revealed how such fears were mediated through ideals of masculinity, honour and economic independence. Henry Sless (Reading) discussed the news reporting of financial events in the Victorian era, while Damian Clavel (Geneva) revisited the speculative bubble in Latin American bonds that gripped investors in the 1820s, focusing, in particular, on how underwriters constructed the notorious story of the ‘fictitious country of Poyais’.[6] Exploring changing cultural attitudes to speculation, Kieran Heinemann (Cambridge) traced the practices of brokers and investors in Britain’s grey market for stocks and shares during the half-century leading up to the Prevention of Fraud Act of 1939. Heinemann recovered a largely forgotten ‘discursive struggle over the boundaries between investment, speculation and gambling’, which still resonates with the concerns of investors and regulators today.

Credit, Currency & Commerce brought together thirty-six junior researchers and senior academics from across history, economics, development economics, business management, and philosophy. Their contributions from a variety of disciplinary angles and methodologies produced lively exchanges on the trajectory of financial and monetary history, and the opportunities it holds for mastering a deeper understanding of the world economy.

The conference was generously funded by the Economic History Society, the Centre for Financial History and the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. For more information on grants and conference funds: www.ehs.org.uk

[1] Barry Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession and the Uses and Misuses of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 377.

[4] Anne Murphy, ‘The Bank of England and the Genesis of Modern Management’, eabh Working Paper, No. 16-02 (August 2016); see also, Anne Murphy, ‘“Writes a fair hand and appears to be well qualified”: the recruitment of Bank of England clerks, 1800-1815’, Financial History Review, 22 (2015), 19-44.

[5] Murphy, ‘The Bank of England and the Genesis of Modern Management’, 29.

Judy Stephenson reviews some of the developments in debates about causes of the Industrial Revolution from this year.

When Nick Crafts reviewed competing ‘meta-narrative’ explanations of the Industrial Revolution by Joel Mokyr and Robert C. Allen in 2010 he noted that explanations of the cause of the IR were a bit like the Holy Grail (1). He was expressing the feeling of a generation of economists who believed that economics could ‘explain’ the modern world, and so must explain the IR. When Deirdre McCloskey’s critique (2) of every meta narrative ever generated about the Industrial Revolution declared that economics could do no such thing it was indicative of a shift generally away from that kind of thinking, or as John Kay said, there are no meta-narratives, only little stories. But in economic history, Allen’s meta narrative has largely prevailed. A recently published little story has questioned it.

Allen ‘explained’ the Industrial Revolution by claiming that because Britain was a ‘high wage’ economy in the eighteenth century, the high cost of labour and the relative cheapness of coal and capital incentivised labour saving mechanisation, and this is why Britain industrialised before other countries. The theory has met with challenges already. In 2013 Humphries undermined the assumptions about household conditions, and since she has also produced new wage data with Jacob Weisdorf that is fundamentally at odds with the day wages Allen used. (3) (I have shown to these be too high, 4). Humphries and Ben Schneider have also shown that spinning was a very low wage activity (5). Whilst all this undermines Allen’s theory, a well told little story by John Styles in the latest edition of The East Asian Journal of British Studies, is notable because it challenges much of what we understand about the innovations at the core of the IR.

Allen’s favourite and oft used case of the effect of British factor prices has always been that of the spinning jenny. In ‘The Industrial Revolution in Miniature’ (6) he sets out high British spinning and labouring wages, and low French wages to show that the jenny was only economical in England. Styles brings some other facts to the case. It’s enjoyable reading so I won’t attempt to reproduce it here but suffice to say he also shows in the first part of the paper that French wages were higher, British lower, and there were more jennies in France than thought.

Whilst every economic historian knows that whoever says the IR says ‘cotton’, what many probably didn’t know is that ‘cotton’, in England, for most of the eighteenth century meant cotton weft spun on linen warp. The inability of English spinners to create cotton warp strong enough to go on larger frames needed for calicoes meant that English ‘cottons’ were a cotton linen mix, which, although popular and cheap, was not a match for the colour and fineness of proper cotton calico. The burgeoning American market wanted calicoes above all else, and to provide it, and tap into that valuable demand, properly spun cotton warp was the only answer. The spinning jenny did not provide such warp, and whilst the calico acts protected or sheltered the home market it was not until Arkwright’s water frame that English cotton could conquer the profitable American market.

In the story of the spinning jenny, high wages (nor cheap coal) had no part to play. It was Arkwright’ invention which fundamentally changed the production of cotton and which met the demand for fine new cotton fashions, and the incentives are far less clear in this story. Styles makes the important point that Arkwright’s macro-invention was the “outcome of a long history of applying capital-intensive, mechanical solutions to quality and supply problems in luxury textile manufacturing” (see particularly pp.186-7). This is not all bad news for Allen. Styles is clear that the wage for those who could produce good warp was very high, but Arkwright, nor others, could not produce enough of it at the volumes needed at any wage. As many readers will understand this little story has implications for our understanding of jennies as ‘macro’ or ‘micro’ inventions, and so for Mokyr too. Bear in mind that Wallis, Colson, and Chilosi and separately Keibek have both shown this year that industrialisation was as much 17th century phenomenon as 18th, so we may need some new models anyway (7).

Styles contribution highlights how a strong empirical basis for economic analysis is essential if meta narratives or ‘big theories’ are to explain economic developments of the past. Allen has always stressed the comparative level of wages in Britain, and there is work to be done on current sources here. (There is a developing Twitter conversation between myself, @pseudoeramus @VincentGeloso @MarkKoyama @benmschneider @ulyssecolonna regarding this subject and market size for instance). But in a year where the notion of economic rationality itself has been shaken to its foundations perhaps it’s not surprising that the Industrial Revolution is moving back towards being ‘unexplained’, although we should await reviews of Mokyr’s latest contribution, (which seems to chime with McCloskey’s ‘cultural’ one) before returning to the view of a couple of decades ago that there really wasn’t one at all.

In the meantime research on the coal tax in early modern England is long over due….

Post global financial crisis, there has been increased importance on exploring financial history of advanced economies and emerging markets to identify episodes of boom, crisis and regulatory responses from which parallels can be drawn today. In this blog, Tehreem Husain discusses an episode from early twentieth century Indian financial history which narrates the tale of a crisis and the evolution of a regulatory institution-the central bank in its wake.

The importance of India amongst the pool of emerging market economies can be gauged from the fact that it contributed 6.8 per cent to global GDP on PPP basis in 2014. Sustaining this growth track requires robust financial regulatory frameworks which can only come with a thorough understanding of its history and the events which led to the evolution of its crucial building block-the central bank. Researching early twentieth century Indian financial history suggests that the onset of the Great War and the financial crisis that ensued in India gave impetus to the creation of a central banking institution in the country.

The Great War, one of the most expensive wars in history, caused untold loss of human life and damages to economic and social resources. Britain at the forefront of the war went through insurmountable stress to meet financing needs of the war. Stephen Broadberry and other eminent economic historians have estimated that the cost of the Great War to Britain exceeded one-third of the total national income of war years. As the war continued in Europe, its stress spilled over the boundaries of mainland Britain and British colonies also became entangled in human and financial costs. For instance, not only did India contribute approximately 1.5 million men recruited during the war, but Indian taxpayers also made a significant contribution of £146 million to Britain to finance the war.

War times impose huge costs on the entire economy but more so for banks, due to the key role that they play in financing it. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a special volume on the effect of war on banking in 1943. One of the chapters, ‘Banking System and War Finance’, highlighted the crucial importance of commercial banks for Treasury borrowing. Banks constituted the largest purchasers of government obligations in addition to being the single most important outlet for the sale of government obligations to the public during World War II. Going back, similar to the experience of other countries, during the Great War Indian treasury borrowed heavily from the banking system. Debt archives from 1918 show that Rs 503.3 million were raised in the form of loans, Treasury Bills and Post Office Cash Certificates. At the same time government continued to issue fresh currency notes, which contributed to extraordinary liquidity flushing the banking sector (evidenced by a high cash-to-deposit ratio).

Studying the Indian economy during that time period using macro-financial indicator analysis, the relation between the British involvements in the Great War and the evolution of central banking is explored in India. Evidence suggests that exigencies of war-finance and government resorting to banking system to finance expenditures, the latter came under huge strain. A stressed macro and financial environment during the war years further weakened the fragile and fragmented Indian banking system. It led to a contagion like financial crisis accelerating bank failures in the war years and beyond. This crisis went unabated due to lack of a formal regulatory structure.

The near absence of regulatory oversight leading to financial crisis gave impetus to the creation of a central banking authority. Although the idea of a ‘banking establishment for India’ dates back to 1836, as a consequence of this episode, restructuring and reforms process ensued. This led to the introduction of a quasi-central banking institution, the Imperial Bank of India in 1921 and finally the creation of a full fledged central bank – the Reserve Bank of India, in 1935. In general, as argued by economists Stijn Claessens and M. Ayhan Kose (2013) deficiencies in regulatory oversight[1] leading to currency and maturity mismatches and resultant financial crisis are applicable to this episode as well.

Interestingly, this episode was not unique to India. In the presence of no regulatory institutions, management and resolution of financial crisis becomes increasingly complex. Historian Harold James has written that the global financial panic of 1907 demonstrated the necessity to America the need to mobilize financial power themselves in the form of a central bank analogous to the Bank of England. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

To conclude, one can argue that absence of a formal central banking institution in India resulted in many stressed scenarios for Indian financial system and missed opportunities for the imperial government. This meant that at that time there was no liquidity support available to the failing commercial banks, no control and coordination of credit creation (i.e. no reserve requirements), no mechanism or support for price discovery of the securities to be traded in the primary and secondary markets, etc. A similar argument was given by Keynes in his book ‘Indian Currency and Finance’ supporting the idea of an Indian central bank. Had there been a central bank in India it would have performed three essential functions: (a) assist the government in flotation of bonds or other government securities to the commercial banks, (b) provide direct lending to treasury in the form of ways-and-means advances or by purchase of government securities, and (c) provide reserves to the commercial banks to help them buy government obligations and offer them guidance and support to carry on as much of their traditional task of financing trade and industry as was compatible with a maximum war effort.

As the Society’s New Researchers prepare to submit their final papers for our conference in March, Anne Murphy gives some invaluable tips on how to win the highly coveted prize for the best ‘new researcher’ paper. Excellent advice for first time and new scholars presenting everywhere ….

WHAT DO WE LOOK FOR IN A PRIZE-WINNING EHS NEW RESEARCHER PAPER?

Don’t skip the Friday afternoon of the Economic History Society Conference, that’s when the New Researchers Sessions are scheduled and it’s often the most interesting part of the weekend. Adding to the excitement is the tension in the air because everyone knows that the presenters are competing for one of the Society’s prestigious New Researcher prizes, awarded each year to the best one or two (and sometimes three) papers.

Between 2014 and 2016 I was lucky enough to be the Chair of the Committee. Hence I got to read dozens of New Researcher papers, to observe numerous panels at the Conference and to hear and read the deliberations of my colleagues on the Committee. I concluded that, although we sometimes disagreed about the merits of a particular paper, what we were looking for was not in dispute and could be summed up in five points. I offer these points here as advice for future New Researchers but with the caveat that, as with any advice, it’s easier to deliver than to act upon!

1) The Committee wants to know why they should care about your argument and findings.

This point shouldn’t come as a surprise. Your PhD supervisor will have told you many times that you need to position your thesis carefully within the existing historiography to demonstrate your original contribution to scholarly knowledge. You need to do this in a conference paper too. Tell us why your work is important. The Committee won’t just know because they won’t all be experts in your field. Also, never assume that you are writing about something so obvious that all scholars rooted in economic history automatically will see its significance. They might but they will still want to know what you are bringing to the debate.

2) The Committee wants you to demonstrate your credentials as a historian.

To do this ensure that your paper provides details on your data, sources and methodology. Are you the first to use the source or are you using your data or sources in a new way? It is true that your footnotes might demonstrate this but you should also reinforce these points through your argument. Also discuss your methodology but with a focus on what you are doing that will make a contribution to the literature or on establishing the appropriateness and relevance of your techniques. Do remember though that your paper should not just focus on your methodology, the Committee expects to see historical context and a strong conclusion.

3) The Committee wants to read work that is clear and well-written.

The Committee will be reading lots of papers and will appreciate well-written work. Again this won’t come as a surprise, you have probably done some teaching, and marking, so will already know the joy of coming across beautifully crafted prose. To generate a clear piece of writing you should remember that you can’t, and shouldn’t, cram your entire thesis into 2,500 words. Pick a representative aspect of your work, something that illustrates its totality but is compact enough for you to present a tight argument based on sound evidence. Pay attention to the way that you say things, not just what you want to say.

4) The Committee wants you to deliver an excellent presentation

Everyone understands that you might be giving your first paper at a big conference and you might be presenting in front of people whose work you admire (or indeed question). We know that is nerve-wracking. But, the prize is not just awarded for the written paper, it’s expected that the presentation at conference will be excellent too. So be clear, confident, pay attention to timing and engage your audience. With regard to content, you should highlight your research question, establish your scholarly contribution, focus on your argument and analysis and present your conclusion.

5) The Committee will expect you to give good responses to the questions

You will be asked questions at the end of your presentation and the Committee will be taking note of how well you address those questions. They will be concerned chiefly with how you defend your argument so make sure you have thought about what sort of things you might be asked before the presentation. Do defend your position and do so calmly, politely and firmly. Be precise and concise. Remember that the time allocated to questions will be short so don’t use it all explaining one point.

If these are the things the committee is looking for, how can you maximise your chances of delivering them?

• Pay attention to the criteria for the New Researcher papers: especially the word count and time limit.

• Write a new paper, don’t just cut down a chapter and think that will do. It won’t!

• Get feedback. Show your paper to your supervisors before you submit.

• Act on the feedback. It might be right; it might be wrong. If you believe the latter, consider why your reader misunderstood or was not convinced by your point. Maybe you need to explain more clearly and evidence more effectively.

• Rehearse your presentation to ensure that you can present well and that you keep to time. And then rehearse again!

• When presenting be confident, speak clearly and loudly enough to be heard.

• Face the audience: do not turn around and speak to the PowerPoint. If you’re using your PowerPoint as a prompt then look at it on the computer screen or better still have some prompt cards in your hand.

by Nuno Palma (University of Groningen) and Jaime Reis (ICS, Universidade de Lisboa)

When did Portugal’s economy diverge from the European core? This paper constructs the first time-series for Portugal’s per capita GDP for 1500-1850, drawing on a new and extensive database. Starting around 1550 there was a highly persistent upward trend on per capita income, which accelerated after 1700 and peaked 50 years later. At that point, per capita incomes were high by European standards. Portuguese per capita GDP was about as high as that of Britain, Italy and the Netherlands, and higher than that of France, Spain, Germany and Sweden. But as the second half of the eighteenth century unfolded, a phase of economic decline was initiated.

Throughout 1550-1750, the population did not catch up with the growth that resulted from increasing opportunities in the colonies and in exports, and from the introduction of highly productive crops resulting from the Columbian exchange, notably maize. The colonial empire also offered opportunities to migrate. But as the second half of the eighteenth century advanced, these sources of growth were becoming increasingly depleted and the decline of Brazilian gold remittances coincided with the beginning of a phase of economic decline. By the late eighteenth century almost all recent per capita GDP and real wage gains had been lost, and their level had become considerably lower than those of Britain and the Netherlands, although still not low by continental standards. As the right conditions were not in place for Portugal to industrialize in the nineteenth century, the country was left behind relatively to the continental European economies that did. Portugal would not experience modern economic growth until mid-twentieth century.

Industrialisation has been the key to modern economic growth and rapidly rising incomes, but some question whether it is always a blessing when taking a broader view of human wellbeing. While the recent rise of China and other Asian economies has transformed the lives of millions, the experience of Britain in the 19th century shows a more mixed picture of development. This column presents a unified framework for measuring British wellbeing over the period 1780-1850, which shows that better health and higher income levels alternated in improving overall wellbeing, until declining health in the 1840s led to stagnating wellbeing.

Consequent upon Wiener’s and Rubinstein’s research respectively into culture and industrial capital and ‘men of wealth’, Cain et al. embarked upon the elucidation of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, which has become a paradigm of English entrepreneurship, status and the performance of the economy.(1) Perhaps, however, we can illustrate a dichotomy by reference to contemporary literature and ethnographic writing. Ostensibly, Henry Wilcox represents this ethos of gentlemanly capitalism, although his company is a commercial enterprise rather than industrial. We should recollect, however, that, although he purchased the Onibury estate (Clun, Shropshire), he really was not enamoured of the countryside, visited the estate rarely, and abandoned it when an unpleasant incident occurred there. Nor was he especially attracted to his wife’s Howards End. His countenance of both arose from expectations of status and family rather than a desire to enjoy the lifestyle of the country elite. His natural environment was the City.(2) In contrast, Jack London excoriated the 400,000 gentlemen in the 1881 census, ‘of no occupation’ and ‘unprofitable’.(3) Such a number could not have been composed of either retired industrialists or ‘men of wealth’.

Working-class whites once had a political home at the union hall; now they’ve found solidarity in a new populist movement

“There are two great material tasks in life,” declared John L. Lewis, the autocratic yet beloved head of the powerful United Mine Workers, to his followers during the 1940 presidential campaign. “The first is to achieve or acquire something of value or something that is desirable…The second task is to prevent some scoundrel from taking it away from you.”

The cheers and loyalty that such sentiments long evoked across the Rust Belt are worth recalling in the wake of Donald Trump’s shocking victory. Pundits across the ideological spectrum are busily repeating the obvious: White working-class men and women vented their frustrations at global elites, well-educated liberals, a condescending media and a capable but sometimes dissembling Democratic candidate in a pantsuit.

You can read the rest of the article on the Wall Street Journal online:

by Patrick O’Brien (Professor Emeritus,
London School of Economics) and Nuno Palma (Assistant Professor,
University of Groningen)
– Friday 21 October 2016

NEW EHES Working paper

The Bank Restriction Act of 1797 suspended the convertibility of the Bank ofEngland’s notes into gold. The current historical consensus is that the suspension was a result of the state’s need to finance the war, France’s remonetization, a loss of confidence in the English country banks, and a run on the Bank of England’s reserves following a landing of French troops in Wales.

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This is the blog of the Economic History Society. The EHS was founded in 1926 to promote research and teaching in economic and social history. It does this through publications, including the Economic History Review, conferences and workshops, and through the finance of research fellowships. For further details:www.ehs.org.uk
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